There’s a reason you’re feeling more anxious about making ends meet these days. This week’s headlines do not exactly inspire confidence. Inflation has reached a 40-year high. Almost two-thirds of us live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to make ends meet.
Those of us who aren’t scraping by are quickly becoming accustomed to the sticker shock that occurs when we look at our shopping receipts and learn that the cost of a dozen eggs appears to be somewhere between ludicrous and stratospheric.
“New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report,” a collaboration with LendingClub, found that “92% of customers have seen rising product pricing, while 74% have seen hikes in their monthly expenditures.” “Increases in items or bills were noted at equal rates by customers across all income levels, although financially suffering consumers were more likely to judge such increases to be prevalent and disturbing.”
In reaction, 55% of those polled have limited spending capacity, 49% have changed their buying habits, and 66% of those living paycheck to paycheck have reduced their spending. While gas prices have recently stabilized, the broad misery remains, well, vast and upsetting.
According to the study “Connected Wellness: What’s Next in the Connected Economy,” 31% of customers polled utilized mental health applications.
“The percentage of consumers utilizing mental health aids like meditation apps and mood enhancers is up 32% from November 2021, while their usage of wearables like Fitbit and Apple Watch to measure vitals has climbed by only 17% over that period,” according to the report.
We’ll be the first to confess that a guided meditation on Headspace isn’t as relaxing as, say, drinking a Negroni on the Amalfi Coast. But, at a time when everything from buying a pizza through an aggregator to traveling to Naples on Aer Lingus has us second-guessing our life choices, we’ll take any respite we can get.
